Episcopal Minister Opposes Canonizing Popular Civil Rights Hero
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
February 8, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Episcopalians may soon be celebrating the "Feast of St. Thurgood" if the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (DC) has its way. The diocese, which represents churches in the District of Columbia and the Maryland counties of Charles, St. Mary's, Prince George's and Montgomery, recently voted to ask the 2006 General Convention of the Episcopal Church to grant sainthood to the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and to include him in the church's official book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. If the resolution is approved by the denomination, Episcopal Churches will celebrate May 17 as Marshall's feast day. On that date in 1954, Marshall, then chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka school desegregation case, having argued that racially segregated public education, though touted as "separate but equal," was inherently unconstitutional because it could never be truly equal.
All told, Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the federal bench, serving the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. He later served as Solicitor General under President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court bench in 1967, remarking that it was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place."
However, not all Episcopalians are in agreement with the idea of making the Baltimore, Maryland-born jurist, civil rights activist, and first African-American Supreme Court Justice a saint. One who does not favor the Diocese of Washington's proposal is Steven Kelly, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Detroit, Michigan.
When it comes to the decision of whether to mark the witness of Marshall's life with official sainthood, Kelly says he hopes "cooler heads will prevail" in the national church. "Unfortunately, whereas in the ancient church sainthood had to do with holiness of life, the Episcopal Church, in declaring people saints or blessed, gets caught up in their works," he asserts.
Making sainthood about people's works "and not about their personal sanctity," Kelly contends, "can get us into a real conundrum." That kind of confusion, he says, "is of course why the Reformation happened, after all."
The Diocese of Washington says Marshall did not speak publicly about his faith but did belong to Episcopal churches in New York and in Washington, DC. But the rector of St. John's still opposes the idea of sainthood for the late Supreme Court justice, despite the historical and social significance of his life.
"I have never read or heard anything about Thurgood Marshall's exceeding personal holiness and heroic virtue," Kelly says, "so I would be very surprised [to learn of his possessing such qualifications] and would have to be convinced otherwise."
The 2006 General Convention of the Episcopal Church will convene June 13-21 in Columbus, Ohio. The Diocese of Washington's legislation proposing to ask the Convention to include Marshall in the church's book of Lesser Feast and Fasts was presented by members of the civil rights pioneer's former congregation -- St. Augustine 's Episcopal Church in Southwest Washington, DC.
